do your eyes water for no apparent reason in this video i'm going to talk about the top
five conditions that may cause your eyes to water and what you can do about it let's focus in
hey howdy everybody i'm dr neal guymon dr eyeguy with the show that focuses on keeping your eyes
the healthiest and your vision the clearest i make a video every week to give you the tips tricks and
tools to keeping your eyes the best if that's something you're interested in subscribe so you
don't miss any future videos otherwise let's focus on those weeping eyes now these are the top five
most common conditions that i see in the clinic that may cause your eyes to water there's about
a million different causes but these are the top five most common number one is dry eyes now
usually when i see a patient and they tell me that their eyes have been watering and then i tell them
right back hey your eyes are dry they look at me like i'm a crazy loony bin and that i didn't even
listen to a word that they said but it's true sometimes eyes watering or that watery eye is a
protective mechanism that kicks in when your eyes may be dry your eyes are dry it sends the message
back to the brain the brain responds by flooding the tears under the eyes to compensate and a lot
of times it's more tears than the eyes can handle and they'll tend to weep off the side causing you
to want to wipe away the tears a lot one thing that i see associated with this dry eye in the
clinic is a lot of times people will get something called keratitis or inflammation of the cornea
right on the surface of the eye it's pretty much little versions of dry patches a lot of times what
i say is sometimes you'll get these dry patches on your hands if your hands are really dry and you'll
go to put lotion on them same thing on the eye you can get dry patches on the surface of the eye
and your eyes and brain will want to compensate by dumping more tears on there to coat the cracks and
dry patches of that eye now unfortunately dry eyes can be very complicated to treat because there's a
lot of different reasons a lot of different conditions and root causes to dry eye that
sometimes can be overwhelming at what treatment will work the best for you now as a baseline
baseline when you're talking about dry eyes you want to be drinking enough water plenty of water
you do want to be using those over-the-counter artificial tears like i said if you get dry
patches on your knuckles you want to put lotion on there if you get dry patches on your eyes you want
to put artificial tears on there further things that you can do is definitely make sure that
you're up on your omega-3s even if it's omega-3 supplements eating your fish if you want to eat
fish you can use a humidifier to make sure that the air around you is nice and moist now i plan
on making future videos about dry eyes that goes more into depth about certain dry eye conditions
and treatments so make sure you subscribe for that in the future number two is allergies now
what's tricky about this is some people may not even notice that they have allergies that
are causing their eyes to water they might not have the runny nose or sneezing or the typical
allergy symptoms but they might have just a little low-grade allergy just enough to irritate the eyes
and make the eyes water now in the clinic a lot of times i'll pull people's eyelids down and on
the inside of the eyelids you'll have these tiny little bumps called papillae that will show up if
you're experiencing any allergies and these little bumps will secrete the chemical histamine that can
make your eyes red and itchy and also cause some inflammation which will eventually lead the eyes
to water so for this one the best thing you can do is try and avoid the allergen if you know what the
allergen is sometimes people don't even know what is irritating their eyes if you don't know what
the allergen is the best thing you can do is get your hands on an allergy eye drop there are really
good over-the-counter allergy eye drops the best one for me that i usually recommend to patients is
called pat a day and i'll put a link down below so you can check that out but works really well
they have one drop versions where you can just put a drop in the morning works throughout the day
also two drop a day so morning and night also works really well number three is something called
blepharitis blepharitis is the inflammation of the eyelids you'll specifically see this inflammation
right around the base of the eyelashes in fact a lot of times you can see a lot of flakes or gunk
that are built up on the base of the eyelashes and this may cause the rim or the margin of the
eyelid to get red and inflamed and irritated now sometimes if you have those flakes the flakes
themselves will fall into the eye and cause the eyes to be irritated in water now the chronic
condition of this blepharitis is you have bacteria they're sitting right on the base of the eyelashes
and they'll produce these toxins and these toxins bacteria poop will sit on the surface of the
eyelashes eyelids and a lot of the toxins will get on the surface of the eye this will in turn
cause the eyelids to become more inflamed more red make the eye more irritated more inflamed and
make the eye water blepharitis can actually be a chronic cycle and it's sometimes really tricky to
break the cycle and treat now the baseline there is you want to be able to keep your eyelids and
eyelashes as clean as possible sometimes you'll have doctors that will recommend applying baby
shampoo to actually wash your eyelashes what i found that works the best for home
maintenance of blepharitis is actually to clean the eyelids with specific blepharitis or eyelid
wipes probably the most common one that you'll see out there is called ocusoft and really simple
if you can do it twice a day the better but at least at night time go in and clean your your
eyelids and your eyelashes out really clean down to the margin you can even go up further up to
the eyebrow just to try and get all those flakes off any bacteria or allergens that got caught into
the eyelashes if you can keep those clean then you'll have the best chance of breaking the cycle
of this blepharitis hey if you're finding value of this video hit that like button for me by hitting
the like button it tells youtube that these videos are actually working and helping people
so kind of do me a favor hit that like button for me okay number four that i see in the clinic is a
blocked tear duct now we have little tiny opening holes on the inside corner of our eyelids called
puncta the puncta is actually what drains the tears out of her eye and if you can imagine if
you have a blocked tear duct or a block drain then tears will not flow down that drain and said there
will be forced out the side of the eye or down the middle now a lot of you can relate to this
they have kids a really common thing that you'll see in infants newborn babies is they'll have a
blocked tear duct and they'll constantly get this this buildup of tears in the corner of their eyes
sometimes there'll be a slight infection in there with some gunk and mucus in there and it's just
because that that tear duct is blocked in there and it's not allowing tears to flow and flush
the eye out so if you're experiencing something like this the best thing you can do is actually
massage the drainage tube that's on the corner of the eye if you can get right in the corner
of the eye and kind of massage it especially if you can apply heat a little bit that will allow
or hopefully move any kind of drainage that's in the corner of that that eye or the drainage
tube down there and kind of help it flush it out now sometimes people get an infection in there may
need or may require an antibiotic an ointment or a drop that can help clear that infection that's
in the puncture now sometimes you can just be born with a narrow tubing or a narrow drain
and so you'll have eyes that water for no apparent reason maybe it's just because you have a narrow
drain that can't handle all of your tears on your eye now there's something that's called punctal
irrigation where we can actually squirt saline solution through that drainage to try and get rid
of whatever block might be there that's holding up all the tears number five that i usually see
in the clinic is general problems with the eyelids themselves now the eyelids play a vital role in
keeping your tears on your eyes moving them in the right direction if you have something wrong with
the eyelids they droop they don't sit right up on the eyeball then your eyelids won't be able to do
their job in moving the tears in the right place now there's something called ectropion where the
eyelid the bottom eyelid may droop out a little bit make it loose and lax and droop out now i said
before there's little drainage holes on the inside corner of the eyelid and if that eyelet is drooped
out the tears won't find that drain and instead will leak out the side of the eyelids on the other
side now on the flip side there's something called entropion where the eyelids will actually curl
into the eye and what happens there is sometimes the eyelashes on the on the eyelid will be
pointing in towards the eyeball and kind of rub and scrape and poke on the eye causing it to
be irritated and causing that reflex tearing to happen causing your eyes to water another thing
if you have just really relaxed lids or maybe not blink the whole way sometimes if you only do this
half blink you'll get a section of the eye that's just constantly exposed to the air and will dry
out really quickly now if you have that dryness of the eye it will cause the eyes of water now you
can concentrate on doing eyelid blink exercises there's actually eyelid blink exercises out there
does help some people kind of funny to tell people to you know work on exercising their eyelid blinks
but they are out there to kind of keep your eyes blinked to coat the whole eye with entropy and
where the eyelashes are open on the eye you can actually go in there and pluck the eyelashes out
to reduce the eye watering you can also if it's really bad you can get those eyelash follicles
destroyed so it doesn't grow any more eyelashes with ectropion where the eyelid is drooped out
a lot of times you're going to need surgery to bring that eyelid back up onto the surface of
the eyeball there's about a billion different things that may cause the eyes to water i could
literally make this list with a hundred things on it but this video would have been two hours long
but these are the top five things that i see in the clinic honorable mentions would be obviously
foreign body if there's something in the eye cause your eyes to water conjunctivitis pink eye will
usually make your eyes water then obviously there's a lot of normal things that may cause
your eyes to water cutting onions those onions chemicals will spark your eyes to water yawning
can stimulate the nerve that causes your eyes to produce some tears and flood the eyes with tears
if you're having eye watering and not as sure exactly what is causing it it's just best to
go in and see your eye doctor he'll be able to tell you exactly what may be causing your eyes
to water and what you can do about it hey thanks for watching the video everybody comment below
if you've had any experiences with these random episodes of eye watering and again i'm dr eyeguy
committed to looking out for you and your eyes stay focused and i'll see you in the next video
you